Our Roses vs Big Box Stores - We’re Putting it to the Test!

DAY ONE - Scroll down for the day-to-day slideshow.

A bouquet of multicolored roses in a clear glass vase.

Village Green Flowers

Only 12 Roses

A person holding 2 bouquets, one of 24 roses from a grocery store, and one from village green flowers and gifts - the 24 grocery store roses are half the size of the quality 24.

Our 24

Their 24

Village Green Flowers & Gifts

🚛 Shipping Time - Our roses come in fresh from the farm with about 2-3 days between being cut at the farm to ready for sale at our store. We receive our roses “dry packed” from the farms direct, which requires more work on our end, but eliminates water damage, ethylene damage, mold and botrytis (a fungus that happens in shipping often when not dry packed).

💧 Processing - We use science-backed care - we strip the thorns, cut our roses under water, treat them with quick dip to fully hydrate them. Cutting stems underwater keeps air from getting into the rose and blocking water flow. It helps the flower stay hydrated by keeping a steady stream of water going up the stem.

🌹 Quality - There are different grades of roses grown, just like produce. Ours are the very highest grade. Grocery stores are the lowest.

❄️ Cold Chain - our roses stay in refrigeration the entire time, from farm to shipping, to our flower shop.

🕒 Average Vase Life: We can only guarantee them for 5 days because of different shorter life fragile varieties we carry, however, we constantly are told that our flowers last 2 weeks, especially our roses.

💐✨ PRESENTATION - our design-forward wrapped bouquets and vase arrangements are created one by one by the most experienced design team for maximum impact and elegant presentation. Arrives arranged, hydrated, and ready to enjoy — no cutting, unwrapping, or DIY.

❤️ Real Florist Support - Replacement Gaurantee - if there are any issues with your order, we take care of it!

🌱 Priority Sourcing - The Top Grade: Quality farms give us priority, so we get consistent quality, freshness, etc, year round. We use the same farms all year round and they know us. We are known as “picky”… but they respect it! ;)

✔️ Experience - Our staff has over 51 years of combined flower shop experience. We know what we are doing. Even compared to other flower shops, our standards for care and handling and processing of our flowers is a grade above our competition.

🔷 Rose Head Size - A photo above shows the comparison

📏 Stem Length - 60-80cm length - See above for the photo!

A bouquet of multicolored roses in a glass vase, featuring shades of red, pink, yellow, and peach.

Big Box Store

24 Roses

Two bouquets of mixed roses in shades of white, yellow, pink, and red arranged on a white surface.

Our 24

Their 24

Big Box Store Brand

🚛 Shipping Time - Typically big box stores ship from the grower to a storage cooler in Miami usually, they can sit there for up to a week, then they ship to a local distribution warehouse, were they sit for usually 2-5 days. then they ship to the local retail store to put out for sale.

🚫💧 Processing - Remove from truck in display buckets already, add water where it is low and put on sales floor. Sometimes water tips out in shipping and they just fill up the bucket without re-cutting the stems, which cuts the vase life by many days. YIKES

🥀 Quality - the farms are using the cheapest methods and skipping steps to make the roses the cheapest on the market, NOT to ensure quality and freshness and vase life, or head size. Its like buying fast fashion, vs. buying quality, well made clothing.

❄️🌡️ Cold Chain - Frequently left non-refrigerated in-store or during shipping. A broken cold chain, traps heat in the boxes, which causes flowers to blow open and not last, and sometimes that causes mold when moisture is released and sits in a hot box.

🕒 Average Vase life: Often show signs of stress or petal drop within just a few days. Industry standard is an average of 5-7 days.

🛒✨ PRESENTATION - DIY arrangement required! Most bundles come unarranged, with leaves, thorns and guard petals to remove yourself, not the most thoughtful way to present a gift.

💔 No professional handling - Prepackaged bouquets are not checked for quantity or quality before they are sold. Flowers are often bruised or short counted. The experiment bouquet we bought, was sold as 24 roses, but only included 23 stems, and one was a stem without a rose head.. so only 22 roses!

❓🌱 Inconsistent Source quality - Farm sources and freshness can differ widely by shipment. You might get open blooms, tight buds that never open, or even wilting stems all in one pack

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❌ Experience - typically a person with less than 1 year experience handles this job, with very little training.

🔹 Rose Head Size - The comparison photo at the top of the page provides a clear illustration

📏 Stem Length - 50cm length - See above for photo!

How They’ve Held Up - Daily Photo Progression:

Day 1

Two glass vases filled with bouquets of multicolored roses on a light-colored surface.

6/17/25 - See their 24 roses on the left, see our 12 on the right

Day 2

Two bouquets of colorful roses in glass vases, with a red arrow pointing to a yellow rose in the left bouquet.
Six photos of various roses and floral arrangements with measuring tape showing sizes from about 2.5 inches to 4 inches. The top left has text reading Big Box Store and the bottom left has text reading Village Green Flowers & Gifts.

6/18/25 - Check out that red rose on the far right - already drooping.

We measured the rose heads on day 2, here’s what we got!

Day 3

Two bouquets of mixed roses in various colors including red, pink, yellow, peach, and lavender in glass vases.
Close-up of a bouquet of multicolored roses including red, pink, yellow, and peach.

6/19/25 - The red rose on the far right has dropped further, and we’re beginning to see 2 more do the same. Some petals are loose/falling off.

Day 4

Two bouquets of multicolored roses, with the left bouquet containing red, yellow, pink, and peach roses, and the right bouquet featuring purple, red, peach, and cream roses. Red arrows point to specific roses in the left bouquet.

6/20/25 - 3 of the Big Box roses have completely punked out. There are about 6 with bruising. Our are all still good, more open and firm. *Correction: 2 have punked out. The middle arrow one (above) is holding up past day 5.

Two bouquets of mixed roses in various colors including red, pink, peach, purple, yellow, and cream, arranged in glass vases on a white surface.

The top down view really shows the roses that have slumped down. It started out found and full, like our are now.

Day 5

Two vases filled with colorful roses, including red, pink, white, yellow, and purple, placed on a white surface against a light background.

6/21/25 - The difference is becoming very evident in the photos - there is a clear difference in the big box side on day 5 when compared to day 1. Ours still look the same, and just continue to open!

Collage of roses: top left shows a close-up of rose stems in a glass vase with water, bottom left features peach and red roses, right displays two long-stemmed red roses with a few detached leaves
Two vases of pink, red, orange, yellow, and purple roses on a white surface, with a few roses and leaves scattered around. A sign indicates one vase has 24 roses and the other 12 roses.

Big Box Store

A collage of three photos showing a bouquet of roses in water, and a few individual rose leaves on a white surface.

We took a close up of everything that has died for each side, the water, and we removed the bad parts and compared. This is a normal part of caring for your fresh cut flowers - the dead part will spread if you don’t remove it. We lost a few small leaves, they lost about 4 leaves, and 2 entire roses. The third bad rose is still okay enough to keep, once we touched it we realized it had some more time and had just sunken down into the bunch. Onward to day 6!

Village Green

Day 6

Two bouquets of mixed color roses in glass vases, one on the left with red, yellow, orange, and pink roses, and one on the right with purple, peach, and white roses, against a white background.

6/22/25 - The Big Box store brands have just about fallen out. Between the bruising and limp roses, there isn’t much time left. Ours are still going strong and have opened beautifully!

A clear glass vase filled with water holding fresh flower stems, viewed from different angles.

The water on the left has gotten cloudy, likely due to foliage and petals falling into the water. We have removed the foliage, but just look at the difference between their roses water on the left, and ours on the right! Notice all the thorns that were on the big box store roses. We removed more dead foliage from their roses today as well, see below.

Two vases filled with colorful roses on a white surface, with some fallen rose petals and leaves in front.

Day 7

Two vases filled with colorful roses in shades of red, pink, peach, white, yellow, and purple, set against a plain background.

6/23/25 - We had to remove 8 of the Big Box roses on this day - so it’s the last time you’ll see this many. The remaining ones are just about gone, I would guess they have one day left, maybe 2. We removed 1 leaf from our side.

Several cut roses with green leaves and stems lying on a white surface, with a single leaf and three unopened rosebuds nearby.

8 roses removed, contaminating the bunch. We removed those roses, and the single leaf on the right from our side. The water was very dirty today, so we went ahead and changed that out too on both samples. Same amount of flower food, and we recut the stems about an inch on each.

Day 8

Two bouquets of roses in glass vases, one with dark red and light pink roses, and the other with purple, red, and cream roses, on a light background.
A glass vase filled with water holding cut rose stems. The stems are submerged in water, with some thorns and green leaves visible.

6/24/25 - All of the remaining roses from today on the big box side need to be trashed. I threw them out right after I took this photo. We will continue to track how long ours hold up!

Two bouquets of roses, one with red and peach roses, the other with purple, red, and peach roses, viewed from above, against a light background. The one on the left is bruised, showing day 8 of this rose experiment.

Lets be real - you probably would have wanted to throw these big box roses out a couple of days ago if they were in your home, even after removing the extremely bad blooms. Just look at those bruises. The water today on their side is already cloudy again - a clear sign it is time to trash those roses.

Day 9

A bouquet of multicolored roses in a glass vase on a white surface, with a clear cylindrical glass nearby.

6/25/25 - We removed a couple of bad leaves from our roses today, and the white are starting to feel soft, but still look good and are okay to keep! We will continue to see how long they last!

A bouquet of roses in various shades including red, pink, purple, white, and peach, with green leaves at the sides.

Still gorgeous and vibrant as ever from the top down view especially. Big box roses were bruised throughout each day from day 1 while our roses still have no bruising thanks to professional handling.

Day 10

A bouquet of multicolored roses in a glass vase on a white surface with a clear glass next to it.

6/26/25 - Still holding up. Not much change from yesterday. Water is still clear from yesterday’s refresh.

A bouquet of roses in shades of red, pink, purple, cream, and peach, arranged in a glass vase on a white surface.

Day 11

Again, not much change since yesterday. Let’s see how long they last!

A bouquet of multicolored roses in a clear glass vase on a white surface, with an empty tall transparent cylindrical glass nearby.

6/27/25 - Similar to yesterday. Today we removed a few bad leaves (below) and refreshed the water again - this is how you would want to care for them at home to get the most time possible.

Bouquet of multicolored roses in a glass vase on a white surface, with a few fallen leaves. Close-up and top-down views of the roses in shades of purple, red, cream, and peach.

Still pretty good, the white roses on the left of the bouquet don’t have much time left, but are okay today. An up-close shot shows 2 of the red roses’ petals are beginning to brown on the end. Still in better shape than day 3 of the big box roses. Let’s see how things are looking tomorrow.

Day 12

A bouquet of multicolored roses in a clear glass vase.

6/28/25 - One of the white ones are done, it’s soft today and will start affecting the other blooms. We are removing it and continuing seeing how long the other last! Otherwise we still have some time left on these guys.

A bouquet of multi-colored roses in a clear vase, marked as Day 12 of growth, with a single white rose lying on a white surface next to a small sign reading 'DAY 12'.

One rose bites the dust on day 12. We took off the wire too, so the flowers shifted slightly in the photo.

Day 13

A clear glass vase with a bouquet of multicolored roses, including pink, red, and orange, positioned on a flat surface next to an empty tall, slender glass.

6/29/25 - We removed 3 more roses today, so we are down to 8 total on our side by day 13! These guys may have 1 or 2 more days left, but we are nearing the end.

A glass vase with 12 multicolored roses and a card labeled 'Village Green 12 Roses' on a white surface, with three additional roses lying beside the vase.

The roses that are left still look gorgeous.

Day 14

A bouquet of mixed pink, red, and peach roses in a clear glass vase, with a tall empty glass next to it on a white surface.

6/30/25 - Today (the last day of rose month) we’re calling it. These roses lasted 2 whole weeks! The purple ones on the left are actually in pretty good shape and could have lasted another day or 2, but we decided to go ahead and end the experiment here.

A bouquet of pink, red, purple, and cream-colored roses in a white vase on a white surface.

A final look at our day 14 roses. Thanks for sticking with us on this journey and thank you for shopping local!

  • Two vases of colorful mixed roses on a white surface against a light background, with the left vase featuring red, pink, peach, yellow, and orange roses, and the right vase featuring purple, red, peach, pink, and cream roses.

    Day 1

    12 of our roses on the right, 24 big box roses on the left.

  • Two vases with large arrangements of multicolored roses, including red, pink, yellow, and purple, placed on a white surface against a plain background.

    Day 2

  • Two glass vases filled with mixed pink, red, purple, white, and yellow roses on a white surface.

    Day 3

  • Two vases filled with colorful roses, including red, pink, peach, yellow, and purple, placed on a white surface against a white background.

    Day 4

  • Two vases of mixed roses, one with red, pink, and yellow roses, the other with pink and purple roses, arranged on a white surface against a white background.

    Day 5

  • Two vases each filled with a bouquet of mixed roses in shades of red, pink, peach, cream, lavender, and yellow.

    Day 6

  • Two vases filled with colorful roses, including red, pink, peach, cream, and purple, on a white surface against a white background.

    Day 7

  • Two glass vases filled with water and arranged with bouquets of assorted roses in shades of red, pink, peach, and purple, placed on a white surface against a light background.

    Day 8

  • A clear glass vase with multicolored roses, including pink, lavender, red, and peach, and a glass of water nearby on a white surface.

    Day 9

    We lost all of the big box roses yesterday - but you probably would have thrown them out by day 6.

  • A glass vase filled with a bouquet of multicolored roses, including pink, red, cream, and purple, next to an empty glass vase on a white surface with a plain white background.

    Day 10

  • A bouquet of multicolored roses in a glass vase on a white surface next to an empty tall glass upright.

    Day 11

  • A clear glass vase filled with a bouquet of multicolored roses and a tall empty glass vase on a white surface, with leafy plant partially visible on the left.

    Day 12

  • A clear glass vase filled with water holding an arrangement of pink, purple, red, and orange roses opposite an empty tall empty glass vase on a white surface.

    Day 13!

    Down to 8 roses on our side.

  • A clear glass vase filled with pink, purple, and peach roses, next to an empty tall cylindrical glass on a white surface with green plants around.

    Day 14

    We’re calling it here. A few of the roses have a little more time - but we feel like we have made our point! See above for close ups & thanks for shopping local! ❤️

🧪 How We Did the Experiment

We want to see if the roses we carry at Village Green really hold up better than the ones you might grab during your next grocery run—so we're putting it to the test. Our hypothesis? That higher quality flowers, handled with proper care, last longer and look better every day they're in the vase.

To keep things fair, we bought a fresh 24-stem mixed rose bouquet from a Big Box store right after a new shipment was stocked. We selected 12 of our own roses from the colors we had on hand that same day. Why only 12? A full 24-stem bunch of our roses wouldn’t even fit in the same frame - they're that much bigger and fuller! We did give you a size comparison of our 24 v their 24 at the top of the page, too.

We used identical vases, the same room, the same water, and even used their flower food in one and ours in the other. Both bunches were cut at a sharp angle before being placed in water. Just a straight-up side-by-side comparison to see what time will reveal. Close ups and all!